


Demon's Sepulchre

by repurposer



Category: Mirai Nikki | Future Diary
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - 3rd World, Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canon - OAV/OVA, F/M, Forbidden Love, M/M, akiyuno, it's mainly a different take on the akiyuno relationship, there's only very slight yukise and yukiyuno here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-20
Updated: 2014-03-20
Packaged: 2018-01-16 09:07:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1341292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/repurposer/pseuds/repurposer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Gasai Yuno of the Third World—this Gasai-san who has been nothing but kind toward him—is not a monster.</p>
<p>And if she receives the memories of the Gasai Yuno of the First World—that Gasai girl who has been nothing but hostile toward him—this Gasai-san will be tainted by her darkness.</p>
<p>This Gasai-san will become the monster he swore to slay.</p>
<p>(but of course, there's no way he could possibly care—right?)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Demon's Sepulchre

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Tumblr. Written for a writing exercise ("send me a fictional character and I will write a romance fic with another randomly selected character"), in which I received Akise as a prompt. So naturally, I wrote my Mirai Nikki OTP. :)
> 
> This is set in the Third World (OVA-verse)—basically, 3rd!Akise/3rd!Yuno, because there's no way AkiYuno could possibly work otherwise. Enjoy.

His role as the Observer is simple. He does not think, he does not dream—his world is a coalescence of facts and truth filed away in manila folders, and equipped with the heightened analytical skills bestowed upon him, he is nothing but the eyes of his God.

And his singular purpose is to observe her, the anomaly.

_Gasai Yuno._

.

.

.

Yet, somehow, sometimes, he  _(briefly)_  deviates from his designated purpose. There’s something in the way her hair rustles in the breeze, plum blossoms and scented soap, the way her teeth glint in the sunlight, that stirs a faint what-could-have-been within the depths of his mind; a murmur, an iridescent bubble, that keeps drifting away the closer he gets.

In the tangled web of truths-and-untruths, he thinks he remembers the ruins of another world. A flash of a red-stained blade, and blood-curdling scream— _Yukki_ —and nothing more.

It occurs to him one day that Gasai Yuno is a monster. A monster who killed the one he loves.

He swears he’ll never forgive her.

.

.

.

_Never_  is a harsh word.

.

.

.

A giggle, warm as shafts of light in winter’s slumber. “Let’s go, Akise-kun!”

"Huh…? Ah, yeah!"

(he looks down at their entwined fingers and tries to make sense of his erratic heartbeat)

.

.

.

_But the Gasai Yuno of the First World and this Gasai Yuno of the Third World are different. They are vastly different, and it would be a severe miscalculation to label them otherwise._

He blinks. He has no idea how this fact could have eluded him—though, of course, it’s not as if it matters. His job as the Observer does not extend as far as judgment. He is only to watch on the sidelines and not interfere; never interfere.

He files away Gasai Yuno as the epitome of an extreme anomaly, while the clock ticks dangerously closer to the arrival of Doomsday.

_A new God must be found, quick—_

.

.

.

He’s not quite sure why, but one day the careful hold-your-tongue-Akise-this-is-a-homicidal-psychopath filter is worn through with a hole and suddenly the words are leaking, dripping in sporadic trickles before he manages to seize control and clamp his lips shut (while Gasai Yuno watches in befuddlement).

It’s only a matter of time before it breaks down completely, and he spills. Everything.

(Well, of course not quite everything. He’s not an  _idiot_.)

.

.

.

One day, when it’s just the two of them, tucked away in a forgotten corner of a coffee shop, he tells of a world. It’s a world long ago toppled by anarchy and buried in rubble, cemented into plaster-tombs as steepled spheres ripped it apart from within. It’s a world consumed by nothingness and left behind no trace of its existence.

As she stirs her latte and lets the steam billow upwards—it shrouds his features and enhances the mystique of it all, he thinks—he tells of two-eyed schoolchildren, one-eyed terrorists, and no-eyed justice-upholders. He tells of valiant heroes, malicious villains and cell phones that thrum out futuristic trends with a shudder of static. He tells of typical Tragic Backstories and Tragic Endings with solemness weighing his brow, despite her giggles and playful remarks about how cliché it sounds.

_What are you doing, Akise? What are you—_

Once, he tells of a girl who loved a boy, so much so that she was willing to kill anything that came close to him.

"That’s ridiculous," she says with an arched eyebrow, downing her coffee in one go. "Female representation in the media is ridiculous enough as it is; we don’t need you adding to that number, Akise-kun."

(there’s something in his heart, almost like an ache)

He knows, from the startled flicker in her eyes (before she smoothens it over with another polite question), that she sees something in his. Disappointment, sorrow, a swirl of emotions he alone cannot comprehend.

.

.

.

She is  _(was)_  a monster, but she has monsters of her own to fight off. Shadowed, gnarly ones, with claws slithering against the peeling walls and reaching for her flesh. Laughing, cackling, teetering and swaying back and forth on the precipice of insanity, and they lunge, coaxing and beckoning them to her—

"I don’t know what’s happening," she whispers, once. Her hands cling to his arm, nails digging into his skin in an imprint of his first step to betrayal. "There are voices in my head, Akise-kun. Calling out to me. Something about a God, a game, a person who was very important to me but I’ve yet to meet. You have to help me, Akise-kun. You have to—"

(he’s not sure what compels him to do what he does; surely this is not what Deus has inscribed in his predestined scroll)

He cuts off her shudders with a hug.

.

.

.

He. Embracing the monster he swore never to forgive.

He, Akise Aru.

.

.

.

_The Gasai Yuno of the Third World—this Gasai-san who has been nothing but kind toward him—is not a monster._

_And if she receives the memories of the Gasai Yuno of the First World—that Gasai girl who has been nothing but hostile toward him—this Gasai-san will be tainted by her darkness._

_This Gasai-san will become the monster he swore to slay._

(what is this peculiar feeling? the tingling in his heart, the salty tang of an unfamiliar liquid dribbling down his face?

surely—the absurdity of such a notion!—he cannot… actually…

_care?_ )

.

.

.

Armageddon arrives in a manner he never expected it to.

She, the kindhearted Gasai Yuno for whom he came to admire, is standing opposite him in their chessboard battleground. Her eyes are blank, unseeing, filled with no indicator of life.

A katana rests in his palm. The metal is cold, unforgiving, its weight too imbalanced.

"You are insane, Gasai-san." The air tremors. It feels, somehow, as if the void itself is crying. The words are mechanical, flowing out in stilted, memorised lines. "If I let you pass on ahead, you may go berserk once more. As the Observer of our God, I cannot allow that to happen."

(this feels so wrong,  _wrong_ )

"Please let me pass, Akise-kun." His name rolling off her tongue is apricity on his skin; he shivers, if only for a moment. "I have to meet this person. I have to. No matter the cost."

( _no, you don’t,_  he wants to retort.

_i can’t let you pass, gasai-san. i can’t._

_i’m sorry._ )

"Then so be it, Gasai-san. I will kill you."

Crimson red and bubblegum pink lock, and in that infinitesimal moment, he sees not a monster, but instead the bubbly teenager he knows and loves—

( _loves?_ )

His split second of hesitation is fatal. His infallible synchronisation fails, and before he knows it, he is crumbling to the ground, katana wrenched from his grasp and pressed to his throat, an all-too-familiar voice in his ear—

"I’m sorry, Akise-kun."

—and she leaves him writhing, but not before stealing the air from his lungs with a calculated dispassion mirroring his own.

.

.

.

( _wait, gasai-san— don’t go—_ )

But doesn’t that mean, then, that he doesn’t want her to meet Yukiteru, because—  _because_ —

(oh.

and finally, he shatters.)


End file.
